I never feel quite right about the preaching in a different place, especially when you're lifting it from a sermon that's ongoing in your own congregation, because the congregation here won't have the same context in the various sermons that have been preached. But nonetheless, we have a marvelous passage before us this morning in Luke chapter 4. We're going to be reading together from verse 14. I'm going to read all the way down to verse 30 for the context. I'm not going to be commenting much on it, but the latter part of the passage is really the hometown response to Jesus. Children, you might remember this is the passage where his own hometown synagogue tries to throw him off of a cliff in response to his preaching. Luke chapter 4, verses 14 through 30. Hear the word of God. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. And a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, is not this Joseph's son? And he said to them, doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, physician heal yourself. What we have heard you did at Capernaum do here in your hometown as well. And he said, truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town, and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went away. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God, it endures forever. Let's pray. Our gracious God, we come now to the preaching of your word. We confess that we are every bit as dependent on your spirit for the right understanding of the preached word as we were when we first became believers. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, the same spirit who granted to us the new heart and regenerated us. Oh, Father, may the same spirit of the risen Christ come now and bless the preaching of the word. anointing it for your holy and eternal purposes, for the building up of the saints, for the saving of the lost, and for the great glory of our triune God. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Be seated. Some of you may be familiar with a Christian music artist named Michael Card. And some of you, if you've already read the sermon title, know exactly where I'm going with this. Michael Card wrote a song called Jubilee. And if you're not yet connecting the dots, the sermon title is Jesus Is Our Jubilee. And that is the chorus or the refrain of the song itself. I want to begin this morning by putting the words before you. We're going to bracket the whole sermon with two songs. I've never done this before in my entire life. This is a first. So if it flops completely, tell me afterwards. I'll never do it again. Michael Card, Jubilee. The word provided for a time. for the slaves to be set free, for the debts to all be cancelled, so his chosen ones could see. His deep desire was for forgiveness. He longed to see their liberty, and his yearning was embodied in the year of Jubilee. I'm going to skip the Course for just a moment and skip on to the second verse. At the Lord's appointed time, His deep desire became a man, the heart of all true jubilation, and with joy we understand. In His voice we hear a trumpet sound that tells us we are free. He is the incarnation of the year of Jubilee. And then here's the chorus. Jubilee, jubilee, Jesus is our jubilee. Debts forgiven, slaves set free, Jesus is our jubilee. And the song concludes with this. To be so completely guilty and given over to despair, to look into your judge's face, and see a Savior there. That's the gospel put to song. Beloved, Jesus is our jubilee. That's our topic this morning. We will aim to see from this account in Luke chapter four, verses 14 through 21, how Jesus is the fulfillment of the year of jubilee. Now, don't worry if you have no idea what I'm talking about with this use of the word jubilee. You will in the next couple of minutes understand it quite well from its Old Testament background, and you'll see what Jesus is doing here in the reading from the scroll of Isaiah. He is pointing us inescapably to the year of the Lord's favor, to that year where all the slaves, where all the indentured servants of Israel's people were set free, where their land and titles and properties were restored. where their fortunes were restored, those who had come into a form of bondage were set free. And Jesus aims to show his hometown synagogue how these things are so. Well, we see three things here in the text in verses 14 through 21. First of all, we'll see in the first several verses Jesus' custom. We're gonna see that this is not the main thrust of the text, but it certainly provides us with ample food for thought as we approach the main point of the text. So Jesus' custom in verses 14 through 16. And then secondly, Jesus' teaching and its fulfillment, Jesus' teaching and its fulfillment. And finally, our response. What ought our response to be to Jesus' teaching and declaration that he is, in fact, the fulfillment of that teaching? And we'll see that he is our Jubilee as well. Well, first of all, we need to say a little bit about the context. Again, I mentioned that we do lose something, don't we, when we are not preaching consecutively through a book? This is the case here in Luke. We need to understand something of Luke's priorities here. Because the very first thing that we read in verse 14 is Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. You remember, it was the Spirit of the living God that overshadowed Mary and gave rise to the virgin birth. You see that it was the Holy Spirit that descended upon the Lord Jesus Christ at His baptism, and the voice of His Father bellowing forth from heaven, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. And then it was that same Spirit, very interestingly, that thrust Him out into the wilderness, into that desolate place, into that place of covenant cursing. Now what Luke does here with the ministry of the Spirit connected to the coming into public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ is to connect and identify Jesus as the last Adam. Now we don't have time to develop all of those themes and I trust that you have been acquainted with the two Adam structure of the New Testament anyway from this very pulpit. But just to say a word about it. You see in baptism how all the countryside comes out to be baptized. Now why are they doing that? Well, it's a baptism of repentance. And so presumably they would be coming out to repent of their sins. It was a preparatory baptism for the coming of the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And so as such, you would think that Jesus would be an innocent bystander, literally, for such a baptism, but he's not. He comes and he subjects himself to the waters of John's baptism. Now, why does he do that? Does he have a sin to confess? Does he have iniquity to repent of? No, the reason why he is there being subjected to John's baptism for repentance is that as the last Adam, he is identifying himself with his people. And He is showing us the way. It is only in Him and through Him that we can ever have what is pictured for us in the waters of baptism. And then as He's driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit, what's He there for? Well, He's not there for a picnic, beloved. He is there to be tempted by the devil. And again, you see the last Adam, the first Adam in the garden. What did he have? He had one command. One thing forbidden to him, he had perfect surroundings, he had communion with God, and he sinned and fell when the devil tempted him. And do you think Luke is intentionally doing this and the gospel writers are intentional in introducing Jesus in this way? The opposite of the garden, the place of covenant cursing. Mark's account tells us that that was the place where the wild beasts were. And the wild beasts are a symbol in the old covenant. Read the prophets, for instance, that indicate to us the place of God's curse. And so the spirit, not the devil, the spirit drives Jesus there in order to engage in mortal combat as the last Adam with the devil. And unlike Adam in his perfect environment, he wins. He rebuffs the devil at every point. And here you can see as the last Adam, he is going to provide for his people a perfect righteousness. So beloved, this is something of the backdrop, and it is with the same Spirit's power that He now comes into His public ministry. Verse 14 again, Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country, and He taught in all their synagogues, being glorified by all. And then verse 16, kind of a break with the context because of the geography here. As He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He was, as is custom, going into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and teaching. And so, here we see the first thing, Jesus' custom. His custom was to preach. He preached all over the place. And, of course, as he came into Nazareth, he was going to do the very same thing. But his custom, even more broadly than that, was to be in the synagogue in the first place. It was to attend upon the means of grace. It was to be present for corporate worship. It was His delight. The will of the Father was the Son's delight at every point. This characterizes His entire ministry, His entire mindset. I delight to do Your will, O God, to me as we sing in Psalm 40. It is my delight. And so Jesus is in the place of delight. Now let me ask you two questions. Number one, is the place of corporate worship a place of delight for you? Do you love it? Or is it just what good Christians do to uphold their standing in the kingdom? You know, of course Christians go to worship. Do you speak or think in these ways? You know, corporate worship, actually going to church, that's the tithe of my time. That's as practical a heresy as you're ever going to hear with regard to corporate worship. That's as man-centered as you could possibly be. Corporate worship is God-centered. Jesus went to the synagogue in order to worship. What an amazing thing. And of course, there are mysteries here in terms of his two natures that we will never understand, even in eternity. We'll certainly never probe the depths of them. So beloved, here's the question. Is corporate worship, is the Lord's Day worship with the Church of the Living God, is it your great delight? Do you look forward to it? Is it that thing that you're kind of having your eye on from afar as you hit Monday, right? That dreadful day of the week, the second day of the week, by the way. And then on into Tuesday and on towards the end of the week and your anticipation for the Lord's Day grows. Oh, I can't wait to be in the courts of God. I cannot wait until the Lord takes my heart and knits it together with the hearts of his people and raises it up to heaven where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. I cannot wait to sing the praises of the King who has done incredible things for me. But secondly, and maybe I should have said this first, are you present? Because it's difficult, of course, you can say, well, I delight to think about Lord's Day worship, but if you never quite get around to participating in it, it's sort of a worthless delight, isn't it? It's wasted hope. It's like an engaged young man who lives afar from his intended, and he calls her up on the Saturday morning, the only morning that they're able to spend time together, and he says, well, you know, I've been really looking forward to spending time with you all week, but I just can't do it. Well, the betrothed is not going to be overly impressed, I don't think. And this is a really, really good reason. Yes, if you're sick. Yes, if you're providentially hindered. But in every other circumstance, the delight of God's people should be, let us come and worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for He is our God. We are renewing covenant with Him. We are hearing Him say to us again, I am your God and you are my people, you and your children after you, even for a thousand generations. What a glorious thing it is. to come, as was Jesus' custom, into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and to gather with the saints and to worship with great joy as well as with that reverence and awe. This was Jesus' custom. But as we see, it was also his custom to read from the scroll and to preach. And this he does in our text as he comes into his hometown of Nazareth. Now, how is this going to go? Well, you know how it goes eventually, because at the end of the text, of course, well, children, he's almost thrown off of a cliff. That can't happen because this is not the will of the father for the son that he be disposed of by his hometown people off the side of a cliff. You see the sovereignty of God here. It's interesting, isn't it? Just in passing here in verse 30, you know, he just kind of goes through the midst and he's gone. There's no explanation. Luke doesn't stop and say, oh, and this was an incredible miracle. Or that Jesus disappeared. Or some such thing. He just simply states, they tried to pinch him off the cliff and then he was gone. He walked right through the midst of them. They didn't see, they didn't notice. However that happened, we don't know exactly. But this is not the will of God. It's a beautiful testimony to the sovereignty of God. Jesus will not die but on the cursed tree. And you see what Luke is doing. He's already set him up as that last Adam. And what is the lot of the last Adam? Well, the last Adam in Luke is also a suffering servant. And so that last Adam, our representative, the one that identifies with us, he is going to have to lay down his life. He is going to have to give it of his own accord. He's going to have to offer himself as that once for all sacrifice for sin. And that can only be done on the cursed tree of the cross. So isn't it a beautiful thing? On the one hand, you're focused on the malice of his hometown people. I mean, he's a homegrown product. He's a rising celebrity, a famous, ever increasingly famous rabbi, at least he's about to be. And they have no time for him by the end. They want to just get rid of him. This is the very son of God. And he has come to give himself. for the sins of sinners. Well, secondly, as we get into the Nazareth account, Jesus teaching and the fulfillment of it. Now it's interesting, isn't it? Because if you have a preacher who stands up in the pulpit and he reads a section of scripture, and then he says, by the way, I'm the fulfillment of this. fire him quickly, call the congregational meeting, get the votes you need, and run him out of town. Now, thankfully, that's not gonna happen here with my brother Roddy, but somewhere it might happen. Jesus did this. He read from the scroll, he sat down, and he preached, and his sermon was basically an exposition of Isaiah 61, and the punchline was, I am this one. I am the one who's spoken of in the scroll." Now it's no wonder that they all marveled at his teaching. It's no wonder that they said, there's no one ever spoke like this. You know, what rabbi, what Pharisee could ever rightly get up and point to the scriptures as being fulfilled in him? There was none. And yet this Jesus speaks with unique heavenly authority because he had it as the son of God who was filled with the Holy Spirit. The question is, what does he teach in that synagogue? We've alluded to the scroll in Isaiah 61 verse 17. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Now that's the teaching. This is what he read in the midst of the synagogue, and that scroll was as has already been said from Isaiah, specifically chapter 61, although it wouldn't have said 61 on the scroll, surely. But we know it as Isaiah 61, and it is this text, these first two verses, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me. To do what? to proclaim the gospel. And we see that at every point in Jesus' ministry. But to proclaim it to the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed. Now, you take all those together, the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed. These are those who are basically, if we would say in modern terms, down on their luck. With forgiveness for the luck reference. But these are ones who are the lowest of the low. They are the outcast of society. These are the ones who are in bad, bad shape. They're perfect pictures of those whom Christ came to save. You know, if you think of yourself as something different than poor or a captive, or blind or oppressed. If you think of yourself in some different category than that, you say, oh, I'm not that or I'm not that. I have plenty of money. You know, I can see just fine. You totally missed the point of the scroll. You see, that's what the Pharisees thought. That's what the religious leaders of his day thought. They thought that when this text was read, that basically that was just this side thing that the Messiah would come to do. One of the results of the Messiah's reign would be that he would squash all of, in this case, the Romans. And he would establish the kingdom, a kingdom in which there wouldn't be any of these things. Now, they maybe didn't have any problem with the captivity part. Because they couldn't really well deny that they were under the thumb of Rome. I mean, Rome had them in their clutches. They were in bondage to Rome in that sense. And so maybe that's the one where you say, okay, okay, as the king, as the messiah, He can come and liberate us from Rome. That would mean the destruction of our enemies. But these other things, in terms of viewing ourselves as poor or blind or oppressed, no, we're doing just fine, thank you very much. Especially spiritually. If you would suggest that these have spiritual connotation, now we're really not going to be happy about that. This is exactly what Jesus does. He refers to a time where the Spirit of the Lord will so anoint the servant of the Lord, the last Adam, and the result will be these amazing things. The gospel proclaimed to the poor, the liberty of the captives, the opening of the eyes of the blind, and the liberating of the oppressed. And all of it will happen as he proclaims the year of the Lord's favor. Now notice that there's two proclamations here. There's the proclaiming of the preaching of the good news, the gospel, but there's also the proclamation of what he calls the year of the Lord's favor. Now all of this, I would suggest to you, points us back even further beyond Isaiah 61 to a passage of relative obscurity. And that would be from the book of Leviticus. Now, let's have a time of confession of sin. When you start your Bible reading program each January and you intend to see it through, what's the book that derails you every time? Just say it, Leviticus, right? It's all these clean and unclean for chapters on end and holy and unholy, holy, common. I mean, what is all this stuff? Well, besides our need to read Michael Morales' book, Who May Ascend the Hill of the Lord, I digress. But Leviticus 25 is a very important text that underlies what we see here in Luke chapter 4. Now, what's the idea in Leviticus 25? You don't need to turn there because we're going to go quickly through the main points. But here in Leviticus 25, We are introduced to the idea, not for the first time, but of Sabbath rest, and then of every seven year rest, and then of seven cycles of seven years rest. And so you see the pattern. You can see on the Sabbath there is that one in seven. That's weekly. Then every year they would come in the seventh month to celebrate on the day of atonement. And then you would have a cycle of seven years, or six years rather, at the end of which you would have a year of rest. And then you would have that seven times. So seven cycles of seven years, 49 years total, after which there would be on the seventh month of the year, on the day of atonement, a trumpet sounded and it would be the declaration of the Jubilee. Now you still might be saying, yeah, but I don't know what the Jubilee is. The Jubilee is that trumpet blast declaration of the liberation of the captive. And you can see it in so many different ways here. You know, God appointed this year because he was the owner of all things. You know, it wasn't the people's possession. It was a stewardship. God owns all the land. He shows his claim on the people. You don't have these indentured servants. or these slaves. They don't ultimately belong to you. Every man belongs to me and I will dictate how each one is to glorify me and how my name is to be glorified in them. But the people also, of course, in belonging to him, would have heard this language in chapter 25 and verse 55, For unto me they are servants out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. He says to them, I own you and that is why you are liberated. You belong to me. I have liberated you from bondage. Now, we have to take a long look, I think, at the origin of this bondage. You know, the need for liberation implies a bondage to something, doesn't it? And I think if we're going to talk seriously about the year of Jubilee and Christ as the fulfillment of such, as we'll see in just a moment, we need to trace back even further than Leviticus 25. Because, of course, on that 50th year, on that Jubilee year, on the Day of Atonement, when the trumpet sounded, all those who had lost everything, that they had perhaps run out of money and couldn't maintain their land, and so they had to sell off their land. They might have even had to sell themselves into indentured servitude. And so on that great year, and of course this is literally a once in a lifetime thing. The year of jubilee is not going to happen twice in somebody's life. Or maybe if they live really long. But every 50 years, you see. And so this was a huge deal. If you had lost land or titles, if you had become an indentured servant, if you had lost everything in that sense, you on that day would hear on the Day of Atonement, the trumpet blast, and you would be free. Your lands would be restored, your possessions, your titles, in some measure your dignity. You'd be released from your servitude. Now, do you think if you were a person in that position that you would long for that day? I think so. I think so. Maybe you can't imagine that. Maybe some of you have actually suffered this very thing on this earth. You've lost everything, so to speak. And you had no idea how you would go forward from that point. Well, that was the position of such a one in Israel. And there would have been that yearning, that longing, oh Lord, how long until that jubilee, until I can hear that trumpet sound, until the captive is liberated, but it's based on something far deeper, beloved. How far back do you think we need to trace in order to identify the origin of a need for the year of jubilee? I think we better trace all the way back to the beginning, don't you? We better think about the first Adam and his fall into sin. And what was the result of that fall into sin? It was that he was placed in bondage to sin. He was in a resultant state of sin and misery. And Paul talks about this, doesn't he, in Romans 6. The bondage that we are all natively in to sin. It reigns over us. It is an ugly taskmaster. It's like those Egyptians who made the Israelites make brick without any straw. Except infinitely worse. And so, as we trace back to the fall, we see the origin of captivity. We see the origin of bondage to sin. But then we see the Old Testament's greatest picture of liberation. Together with that year of Jubilee, of course, on which is based. But it is the picture of the Exodus. You see the people now in bondage, literally, to the Egyptians under the thumb of Pharaoh, making bricks without straw. They're groaning. And the Lord heard their cries and he came down. gloriously in the plagues to demonstrate his power over the pagan deities. And then as he brought them out after that last plague of the firstborn, where he brings them and children, we can never grow tired of hearing the glory and majesty of our God, but he splits that sea wide open. And what do they do? They walk through on dry ground. And that sea then as the Pharaoh comes in to chase after them, closes on them. and destroys them. And what is the result, beloved? They are delivered captives from their captivity. Now, of course, it wasn't all a bed of roses for the people of Israel on the other side of the Red Sea, as you know, as you continue to read on in Exodus and then into the book of Numbers. But the point here is that in the Old Covenant, the greatest picture of liberation from bondage is the Exodus. And then as we come back to Leviticus 25, we can see that it's on the pattern of that liberation from bondage that God establishes the year of Jubilee. Well, now we can come forward to Isaiah 61 and to Luke 4. So imagine it. Jesus here takes the scroll. He probably requested that scroll because He intended to preach on that passage. And His sermon from Isaiah 61 speaks of fulfillment. And what does He say? This has been fulfilled today in your hearing. In other words, I am the fulfillment of this scroll and everything that's written in it. Now that is an astonishing claim. But what's he actually claiming? In what sense is Jesus the fulfillment? You notice he proclaims the gospel to the poor. He proclaims liberty to captives, recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed. When? When he proclaims the year of the Lord's favor, or in some translations, the acceptable year of the Lord. Which year is that? Jesus comes as the fulfillment of the year of the Lord's favor. He comes as the fulfillment of the year of jubilee. Now are the pieces falling together in your mind here? We didn't come this morning primarily to talk about an old covenant ritual or a ceremony or even the greatest feast or even the day of atonement. And yet we are talking about them because Jesus says he's the fulfillment of all of them. Now go back. You're that poor man who's lost everything. And he comes on that seventh month. And he comes on the day of atonement. And he's just waiting for it. He's just waiting for it. And then he hears it. Boom! The sound of the trumpet. And he knows what that sound means. It means liberation. It means freedom. It means no more bondage. It means his inheritance is restored to him. This is the implication for Him. And if that's the implication for Him, and Jesus is the fulfillment of that day of Jubilee, or year of Jubilee rather, then how is He so for us? We've already been getting at it. From the fall, we are in bondage to sin. Sin has its grip on us. It reigns over us. We can do nothing, Paul says in Romans 8, that can please God. There's none righteous. No, not one. We are under bondage to sin, slavery, death, hell, the devil. And Jesus now will come and he will fulfill the year of Jubilee. And he comes to set free all of the captives. Who are the captives? It's you and me. Who are the blind? It's you and me. Who are the poor? It's you and me. All of these categories apply to us in our nature. This is who and what we are. Do you believe it? Do you believe it? Or do you believe, rather, that you are somehow going to assist God in liberating you? Or maybe even worse, you don't really think you need liberating at all because you live a pretty moral life. You've got things together. Or maybe you're resting in your sound theology. Your sound theology is not the fulfillment of the year of Jubilee. Your good moral life is certainly not the fulfillment of the year of Jubilee. It is only the Savior, Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, and the last Adam, who fulfills the year of Jubilee. And as Paul puts it in Romans 6, that we have been set free from bondage to sin, and we have been ushered into the glorious liberty of the sons and daughters of God. Now beloved, if you see the picture here, okay, we started out fall, Adam and Eve, bondage to sin. We saw the Israelites in picture form, right? True history, picture form, in bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt. We have seen now that all of us in Adam are very much like the Israelites under the Egyptians. And every one of us is in Adam the first by nature in bondage to sin. And now we have been set free. The trumpet blast has sounded. Christ has given himself, having come down to the earth in our flesh, to represent us, to identify with us. And his greatest identification with us, beloved, was at that cross. We asked the question of his baptism. Was he there to confess some of his sins? And the answer was certainly not. He was there to identify with his sinful people. Then what was he doing at the cross? Oh, beloved, that is the greatest identification that there could ever be with sinners. Because the cross was emblematic of God's curse. And what happens at the cross to prove that out? As Jesus hangs there suspended between earth and heaven, he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it is precisely because he is on the tree of forsakenness. It is precisely because, as Paul says in Galatians 3, that he has become a curse for us. Cursed is the man who hangs on the tree. He takes the curse and our bondage to sin. And in doing so, he breaks the power of reigning sin and he sets the prisoner free. This is the gospel of liberation from bondage. Jesus is our Jubilee. You know, there's an end to the story. There's a day coming. There's a day coming when the trumpet will sound yet again. You know, when Christ gave himself on the cross, it's the day of atonement, beloved. That's the sounding forth of the jubilee trumpet, the freeing of all the captives. But the trumpet will sound again when he returns. And when our Savior comes again, he comes in glory. And he comes to give to us, or rather, we should say to receive us to himself. and in doing so to give us the consummate blessing that He has accomplished on the cross for us now. We enjoy tremendous blessing, tremendous liberty as the sons and daughters of God now, but then we'll enjoy it all the more perfectly because it will be without sin. Look at what John writes in Revelation chapter seven. What do all these things point to? The liberation of captives, setting us free. In John, John's Revelation, chapter 7. Verses 15 through 17. Therefore, there before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, and neither thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd. and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. We've been set free, beloved in Christ. We enjoy the liberty of the sons and daughters of God, but there is a consummate, a full and ultimate liberty that awaits us. A freedom like nothing that we have ever known to this point. We taste it now and it gives us a longing for that great day. But what a day that will be when all sin fades away. when all of our sorrows are done away, when we will see Him face to face and become like Him, because we'll see Him as He is. I will respond. And this very quickly. Thirdly, we respond He set us free through His death. Now, we could be tempted, as the early church was tempted, to think, this is fantastic. And we should think that. But the conclusion here is wrong. This is fantastic. We've been set free from sin. No more bondage to sin. You know, we're free. Now Paul addresses this all over the place, you know, shall we sin all the more that grace may increase? Or in Galatians 5, it is for freedom or liberty that Christ has set you free, but what? But essentially, and I'm paraphrasing, don't use your liberty for license. Now if there's anything that plagues the church in our day, it is this perversion. that being liberated, that being freed from sin and death is basically a fire insurance policy against eventual hell. In other words, if I make a decision for Jesus, if I come to church, if I do the right things, then that saves me from hell. And all the rest of the time that I'm not either at church or that first time when I profess my faith, I can pretty much do whatever I want. That's for me. How wonderful. Except it's not. You know, if you live like that, you've completely missed the point. The trumpet has sounded, but you've somehow been deaf to it. Christ has given himself in place of sinners, not so that we might go on and live life however we want, and most certainly not so that we could go imitating our father by nature, the devil. He liberated us so that we would serve Him. There's that beautiful picture of Jesus when He heals Peter's mother-in-law. Remember, she has that high fever and He goes in and He just raises her up. And what does she do? She immediately got up and began to serve them. Now we can turn that into some sexist, you know, liberal argument. We'd miss the gospel if we did it. What just happened there? Again, in picture form. She's healed, resurrected as it were, by the marvelous Savior. And what was her first instinct when she was raised? It was to serve. When you think of what Jesus Christ has done to liberate you from sin, is that your first instinct? How can I serve him? How can I praise him? Oh, how I love him. Or has the Christian life become for you just do's and don'ts? A moral code by which you feel better about yourself when you obey and worse about yourself when you disobey. Beloved, the gospel liberates. The gospel frees us to serve Him. Paul puts it very strangely, doesn't he, in Romans 6? Freed from sin, the slavery of sin, in order that we might be slaves to God in righteousness. Beloved, you've been liberated in Christ if you be His. Yours is a glorious freedom and liberty, not for license, not to indulge the flesh, but to serve the living God. It's the most glorious slavery that there ever has been. It's the only glorious slavery that's ever been. Slavery to Jesus Christ. We are now His. We've been bought with a price, the precious blood of Jesus. Therefore, make your life's business this one thing, glorify God in your bodies. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you and praise you for the abundance of your grace. We love you for you first loved us. You've liberated us, you've set us free. You have done so at the high cost of the precious blood of your son. How we worship you, oh Lord. And we pray that you would make our hearts to sing your praise day by day. Father, forgive us for we are a forgetful people. We are very much cut from the same cloth as our forefathers in the wilderness who grumbled and complained who did not heed your word. And for this, Father, we beg your forgiveness and we pray that you would set our hearts on the glorious work of redemption, that we would never be allowed to take our eyes off of Jesus, the founder, the captain, the perfecter, the finisher of our faith, the one for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, scorned in shame, is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. We praise you that Jesus is the fulfillment. He is our Jubilee. And we pray in his precious name. Amen. Beloved, let's respond together in praise. Number 474, I told you we're going to begin with a song and end with a song, and this is that song, Blow Ye the Trumpet Blow. This is not a song that I grew up singing that I knew anything about, to be perfectly honest. It's sung to the same tune as Arise My Soul Arise. You're more familiar with that tune, but I would encourage you to focus very intentionally on the words. You're going to summary of the sermon as you do. Let's stand together as we sing number 474. Oh, hear the trumpet roar! Return Return As full of doom and pain, He clearly spirits rest, He'd mournful souls be glad, The year of Return Return Extra Returning The year of jubilee is come, returning ransom sinners come, returning ransom sinners come. Ye who have sold for naught your heritage above, receive it back unbought, the gift of Jesus' love. The year of Jubilee is come. Return ye, rest of sinners, home. Return ye, rest of sinners, home. The gospel trumpet is blown. Returning God's people said, Amen. Lift up your hearts and your heads and receive the blessing of your great God. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace now and forevermore. Amen.